Ch. 2: The Graveyard of Dragons
Back to Arheled The carnival was in town. Finally. Connor, who was in the volunteer fire dept, was out by the park drive directing cars. He and Austin weren’t on speaking terms after the betrayal, but Brianna had practically dragged him there every night it was up. This was the second night. It was threatening rain and weird eerie blue and grey clouds like ancient castles were glowering down on the crowded park. The rides flashed and blinked. Crowds laughed. Brianna and the gang had smoked a little pot before they went (and then some smoker’s incense to cover the smell) and they were whooping and laughing. Vanessa was doing silly dance moves. Zimmerman hadn’t wanted a smoke: that’s cool, that’s his loss, more weed and more high for us. Bree was kissing Austin, while Camille and Jas were ridiculing them. Austin saw spring out of the crowd, or sink into it as if stamped in vivid detail, a face he knew: hard, stern, with burning eyes: that guy with the bike, what was his name? He was with a couple of really cute girls and some guys, and a strange hostile expression marked his face. And there should be. This was their place, not his; this was their world, not his. He forgot him the next moment as Bree’s little fingers went exploring. The thunder began to sound. A man was standing on the ferris wheel. The thunder sounded from him. Pulsing throbbing thunder. Time slowed. Clouds shook and swirled slowly around, rotating over him, bending down toward him. Despite the distance that separated them his eyes were visible like burning stars, so was his eerie mocking smile. He lifted his hands, and lightning sprang about among the clouds. There was a crash of shattering light bulbs. The voice of the man sounded like the thunder, pulsing and beating at the very foundations of his soul. Austin heard ancient words in ancient tongues reechoing and echoing throughout his aching mind. Tremendous vistas of things his shallow soul had never comprehended burst like stars within his head and blotted out his sight. He swayed. His legs were flexing and quaking. He felt sick to his stomach. He felt sick to his lungs, to his muscles, as if lung and bicep and developed the ability to vomit. He did not even notice he had sprawled upon the ground. He had never known such anguish. It was as if his body was being wrung like a rag; wrung furthermore by hands of living flame. Unimaginable heat roared and raced through his twisting organs. Muscles clenched in nauseous agony even as they cooked alive. He found his eyes dancing down strange avenues of flame, green and pink and yellow flame, flame not only hot but cold, heavy flame, flame of blackness, wet flame, dry flame, electric flame and flaming light; every color there was known danced and jeered with roaring laugh. And in every flame faces were growing, faces of humans, human faces melting and distending, rending with a torment like his own; and flickering in and out were other faces, intelligent lizards, rational reptiles with wise and evil grins, and their eyes were dragon’s eyes. He felt arms twisting and bending. He felt his legs buckle backward and knees break and reform. He could not scream, for his throat was changing too, and his face was growing long, distending, and his eyes were filled with a huge face, seven huge faces, the faces of the dragon in his dream. '' “You have a new Father now.” the Dragon said. “I’m Austin!” his mind screamed; his body made no sound, for it was growing long. “I know who Dad is! The f—head screwed my mom and left her! I want to kill him!” '' “That may come.” said the Dragon. “But he did not sire you. Another did, taking his shape. I did. Dragon-blooded, dragon-boned, born of human, called now home! Dragon-born, by dragon grown, be not now mortal but mine own! Walk and shift as man or me, thy true nature son to be; the cloud and fog, the storming smog, the power of lightning now be thine! Weather-dragon, weather-breathing, thy dual nature now conceiving: Austin, rise and me adore!” '' He knew the meaning of that now. Amid the roaring screaming flames of the souls of the dragons as they were being born, he prostrated himself in abasement and adoration before the seven faces of the Father of Dragons. He blinked. His eyelids moved oddly. He saw in several spectrums at once, so that the world of light was overlaid with the wavering red of heat-vision, and the bizarre hues of ultraviolet, and he could dimly see through garments and walls, and knew if he sharpened it he could see the X-rays. He lumbered along on four legs, slow and awkward: his muscles kept misbehaving whenever he told them to do something, moving in odd directions. He lifted his head and inhaled; and when he breathed out, he breathed tiny blue electric sparks. Food. Warm, luscious, living flesh moved around him. Gorgeous raw legs with blood still pumping through them moved and ran. A ravenous lust to eat raged through him. A girl was in front of him. His long new body discovered it had a tail, and flexing his new huge mile-long butt Austin knocked the girl down. Flesh. Flesh. Flesh.'' Peach-like skin, so supple and chewy. Firm muscles to crunch. Delicious soft breasts. He gobbled, pure bliss filling his beastial stomach as raw blood-soggy food slid tenderly down his gullet. Only when he reached the face did a faint flash of recognition come over him: for it was Jenna, her gold hair matted with blood, a look on her distorted face such as must be worn by the damned. His hunger appeased, Austin swallowed the last of the delicious mashed skull and looked around. Most of the people had fled. Half the rides were burning. Dragons were crawling and stumbling over themselves all around him. There must have been dozens. Five humans had not fled. Two soft luscious pretty girls. One nice plump guy. Two stringy guys. The shorter of the two had red hair and was holding an umbrella. It was the bike guy. Whom he hated. It was Ronnie Wendy. Austin opened his mouth like a yawn. A pleasurable sensation of expulsion welled up far down inside him. He felt power gathering in his throat, sending shivers of pleasure through his body. His mouth opened wider, in a cross between a yawn and vomit, and the power travelled up him, tingling deliciously, and burst out of his mouth. It looked like a cloudy cone of lightnings and raw concentrated weather blasting in a single blueish cataract from his mouth onto the hated Ronnie. He paused to draw breath. That was impossible! All five were not only standing but completely unharmed! Austin gathered breath to try again. The umbrella flamed blue. The power that smote him was a thing utterly foreign to his experience. He knew no words for it. It was solid, because he impeded it and not because it had solidity; it was high, it was as if something remote and lofty from the grossnesses of earth had come down to breathe into his face; it was clean, strong, good; it was so good that it burned him, it hurt him, for he was not good and had never been good; he was steeped in sin from his birth and he had no part in this. He crashed, tumbling, head over heels before the blue wind of the sanctified umbrella. A Saint has held this, the voice of his Father resounded in his thought. ''Follow them, but do not press them. Destroy the Five Churches! '' Church. The word called up an insane torrent of instinctive, nauseous, loathsome associations and images. Sharp prickly spires and steeples like spikes set to spear dragons. Awful castles that had too many windows and yet were still fortresses. Sickening painted saints and the evil glare of colored glass. The altars, the Bibles, the hateful ribbons of the pomp of God, crashed through his dragonish soul like the very synthesis and archetype of everything evil. Hatred, pure and raging as a waterfall, poured over him as he lumbered after the retreating accursed Catholics, the hereditary foe of his ancient people since first the Cursed One climbed up on His tree. There. Like a hard solid stone in a sea of mud, a stone of poison in a lake of healthy warm slime, it burned against the clouds. His eyes could not see it: to them, the holy place was only a black void, a cutout in the vision, traceable only by outline: but his dragon-magic saw it brilliant, searingly so. He hesitated to go closer. Behind him he heard a hiss and scream of dragonish agony and laughed: a fire-dragon had tried to ford the shallow river. But he approached none the less. His body felt the power in that place, the power of goodness, of prayer and blessing: a more solid form of the umbrella’s bolt. It beat on him like heat. He found to his surprise that although uncomfortable he could endure it, like hot water that is not quite hot enough to scald but still causes pain. He crawled around it, snuffling at the base. His brothers and sisters landed on the roof, grimacing at the prickly pain the touch of the church gave them. ''Kill. Smash. Crush. '' The voice of their Father reawoke his hatred. Austin heaved back his tail, dragon-eyes narrowed. The cursed thing was hard to see properly; it was like a blinding-bright darkness. He swung, hard. He felt rock shudder and mortar crack beneath his scales. Grinning he leaned back, this time for a real blow. His squinting eyes could not see the white flash that passed through the very stone of the church. His tail rebounded like a snake slapped on rocks. Austin curled up on the ground, moaning, his bruised tail cuddled against his belly. What the heck had happened to that weak stone wall?! '' Road.. The Road. The Road is in the churches. The Road called them awake. '' What awful force the Road might be Austin did not know. He only felt it. Felt a mindless but tremendous power, like the very blood of the Gods themselves, pulsing in those walls. Looking through those walls. Looking right at him. Then it expelled him. He felt it, like devastatingly powerful currents of concentrated water hammering upon you till you can no longer resist, seize him and hurl him into the air. On every side as he tumbled he saw his brothers sailing beside him; winged or wingless, for one awful moment they all flew. '' No—no—the trees were coming too fast… '' Crashing and thudding the dragons smashed through the branches of strange trees to plow great pits in the earth. Moaning lizard-forms squirmed in pain as far as Austin could see. He wasn’t too hurt himself, as he’d curled up in a ball and his scales were tough. '' “Heal.” '' With a wafting wind of power a massive form settled lower and lower, giant wings beating. Trees dissolved at his touch. The Father of Dragons landed on the ground. Injuries closed and dragons ceased to squirm. Fearfully they looked up at the monster that had haunted all their dreams the past summer. ''“Does my size intimidate you? Perhaps you would know me better if you beheld the form under which I begot you all.” '' The giant dragon shrank, red scales and gold wings disappearing. His seven heads fused into one, and that one became a man’s. Bald, massive and stout though fit and nimble, they all knew him: Cornello, the town big-shot, Kevin’s father, who had often hosted them in wild drug parties on Big Island where he lived. Several of the girl-dragons giggled: they remembered being in bed with this same man. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, man, you’re saying you’re our DAD?!” Austin exclaimed. His voice was a surprise; like his own, but rougher and somehow crackling. “Yes.” Cornello said, a wide and ugly smile on his beaming ruddy features. “Like all dragons I can change my shape. I had so much fun with your hot little mommies. And when you girls grew older, to cement the bond, I had some fun with you, too.” Nauseated expressions appeared on several feminine but reptilian faces. One dragon started vomiting mud: she apparently was an Earth Dragon. With a concentrated roar of powers the other dragons, as one, erupted upon the Father of Dragons. The gigantic laughter of Cornello rose above the crackling crashes of power. None of their blasts was getting anywhere near him. “You’re getting better, my children. But you are not good enough.” Such punishment as followed Austin could barely comprehend; he only knew his dragon’s body was being smashed systematically in every possible way. He lashed and writhed as blades of water tore and drilled him, and all around he heard the screams of dragons. “You shall learn, little children, just how to use your powers. You shall learn, little children, just how enslaved to me you are.” Cornello’s voice filled the earth. All pain was gone. Battered, exhausted and terrified, the dragons sprawled upon the ground, injuries again made whole. “You do not draw breath or expire without my leave and permission. What I command, you will do!” Percussive beats of pulsing music pounded in the air. Cornello, dragon once more but as small now as they were, began bobbing back and forth as he promenaded before them, heads snaking in and out in birdlike darts in time with the beat. The feet of the dragons began to tap and their own heads to snake and dart in time. Slow horror was stamped on slender sharp faces as they felt themselves enthralled by the music and recognized the song. “I’m sexy and I know it, know it, know it.” the deep voice of the Dragon reached inside them, pounding, tugging. “He’s sexy and he knows it.” wailed the dragons in chorous. “You’re looking at BOD, BOD, BOD. You’re lookin’ at GOD. For….I’m sexy and I know it.” rapped the Dragon. Wailing as they felt huge and horrible urges bulge like vomit through their bodies, the dragons drew nearer. He was bilocating, he stood before each one of them, he was naked, he had a grossly attractive dragonish private. The atavistic urges tore like pain. Their humanity, degraded as they were, recoiled in screaming horror as their dragon-bodies forced them to mate with their own Father. Austin’s eyes slowly opened. He blinked, painfully, his lids like bruised stones. His eyes hurt. Come to think of it, everywhere hurt. Especially his groin and rear end. He flopped limp, groaning as pain shot through him. After a while he managed to sit up. He was lying on leaves, utterly naked, in the middle of a cloudy forest. At least, there was no sun and overhead was only a greyish gloom. Other naked people were sprawled here and there and everywhere as far as the undergrowth let him see: at first sight it was hard to tell if any were girls, but on a few who lay face down he saw long fine hair and others had breasts too large for males. Normally this sort of sight would have him in a tizzy, but he was in such aching, dull pain he barely even registered the fact. Sitting up he hugged himself, shivering: cold was added to his other problems. He hadn’t thought his skin was that pale, and should it have blue tinges underneath like that? Gripping his most painful areas he moaned aloud. Others were stirring now, evidently in as much pain as he was. Faces like ashy snow, drawn with suffering, blinked bruised eyes at each other. Girls huddled with arms wrapped around chests. Boys crouched miserably. Nobody felt like making any crude comments, as they would otherwise have been doing with great glee on finding themselves in such unclad company. He was surprised to see here and there a face he knew: there was Brianna, on all fours, looking undecided whether to crawl or plop down and die, and there was Jeremiah, and Vanessa, and Connor—heck, practically half the people he knew were here! “What…happened to us?” Vanessa was groaning. “I feel like I got raped.” Brianna called, before flopping back on her face. “Did we really…turn into dragons?” said Ally. “Where’s Jenna.” moaned Jeremiah. “Um, I think I ate her.” said Austin. Twigs broke under booted feet. The children fell still, shrinking. Memory roared back over them. Torment grew, etched, in every face. The voice of their Father guffawed with inhuman mirth above them. “You do not know pain, you do not know fear. You pathetic little weaklings. A mere taste of both lies you in the dust. With the adversaries we are going to face, you will need to bear pain. You will need to breast your fear.” They looked away with hatred from the face of Cornello. “Shift your shapes.” their Father said contemptuously. “When you are injured, shift your shape. The shifting will heal your wounds.” Slowly Austin reached down inside himself. The crackling power was there, waiting. He tugged. The consuming pain of transformation, somewhat less and somewhat faster than the last time, made him scream. Similar screams arose from the others. “This is only your second change. With the third it will be bearable; with the fourth, pain will cease, and the fifth will be completely natural.” said Cornello. “You are not here to play. You are here to be trained.” The dragons were having dinner. The fifteen deer and four bears they had hunted would last them, Cornello informed them, for a week in dragon-shape, unless they went to sleep. So as dragons do, they ate the meat all at once, Brianna cooking hers in her own flames. “It’s almost kind of fun, being a dragon.” she said. “Not to mention that dragons have so many cool new pleasure organs.” “Mmm. Just lick my ear like that again, would you?” said Briana, and gasped with delight when he did so. “You think it is fun to be dragon?” the voice of their Father said softly. All the dragons flinched away. Cornello in dragon-form moved sinuously through them. “You’re improving. At least you know your powers. But you are still pathetically human. A weakness I will remove. You have not yet died—or been reborn.” He grew to a tremendous size. “I hear little Jermy tried to kill himself the other day, didn’t he? Shall I show you why no Dragon ever really dies? Shall I show you all how tight I hold you, that even if I die, I can get you back? I believe I shall. “Prepare to enter the Graveyard of Dragons!” It was the most agonizing experience Austin had ever known. Teeth were tearing their way into every bit and pleasure organ his new body had. It was like something chewing on his privates and eating them alive, only everywhere. Blue and red lightnings of pain jiggered his mind. He became aware that he was screaming powers, screaming weathers instead of sound; and the dragons that were eating him were screaming powers as well, for they were being eaten themselves; and the hindmost in the circular chain, Austin was eating. “You have become the Ouroboros.” laughed their Father. “You know, the Hindu serpent, beats his own tail, sign of infinity? Granted, it will not last forever; the circle shortens, and he that is left, I will eat.” Brianna was chewing Austin’s throat and screaming fire instead of sound. Vanessa was devouring his torso; she’d already consumed his tail. Her own torso was nearly gone. Ripping pain piled on ripping pain, and Austin longed to go mad, to escape the torture… “No, you crybaby,” Cornello sneered, “even a madman still feels pain. There is no escape. You are my sons. My beloved sons, whom I desire with an utter consuming love. How I long to unite you all to me, to feed me forever as you boil in my belly. But damnation is not yet yours. Not until the end of the world. Do not rejoice—you may yet long for the pains of Hell, to save you from the pains of Dragon.” Brianna’s jaws crushed his skull. Teeth like diamond blades sliced into Austin’s brain. With a crescendo of agony the dragon boot camp faded from his eyes. He was in a land of stone. Everything was dull and red, reddish rock and reddish sand and a sky of an overcast pinkness. Great tattering crags, pinnacles and broken needles of stone, rose all around, like some nightmare desert badlands. Out of the stone unfolded frozen shapes, as if the crags had been birthing monstrous creatures before they all were turned to stone. Wings, half extended; a long whiskered head, sinuous and oriental and unutterably evil; great serpentine tails like broken saws, their stegosaurian plates fractured and jagged. Dragons, he knew at once; but completely unlike the dragons that now crouched, small and reptilian, in a huddled group in the hollow of the badlands. Primeval dragons. Pure dragon, without a breath or shadow of human. Ancient monsters from before the fall of Gondolin. “Are we…dead?” quavered Brianna. “I’m guessing we are.” said Austin, his voice sounding like a scared pig in his own ears. “And this is the afterlife.” “Let’s get out of here, then!” said Vanessa. Her voice echoed in the crags, and she covered her mouth, looking nervously around. “Um, dude, not all of us fly.” said Jeremiah. “I’m not a dude, you little dipsqueak, I’m a girl.” she snapped; but still she kept her voice down, all of them did, out of some mysterious instinctive distrust of that frozen slumber of stone the monsters were in. “Yeah, and a really sexy one, too.” “Oh, stop it.” she said, but she was smiling. “You’re a little young for me.” “Hey, I screw as well as a high schooler.” “Hmm. Maybe I’ll try you out.” she said coyly. “Can you lovebirds, like, shut up?” said another dragon. No one had paid him much attention before, a quiet and rather solitary boy who never joined in when the others started a nice session of dirt-talk. His dragon-form was rather newtlike and orange, and no one remembered seeing him use any powers at all. “What’s wrong, dude?” said Vanessa. “You felt it yourself a moment ago.” he said. “If we talk too loud…they will wake up.” “So?” Brianna said cattily. “We’re dragons, too. And aren’t we already dead?” “Not really.” Newt answered. “If we were, we would be free. We would be sent to our place. And I somehow very much doubt you lovebirds would be feeling quite so lusty if you really were ghosts.” “Who are you, anyway?” snapped Arianna, a nasty black girl of maybe 12. She had an “attitude” and regarded politeness as a personal insult and any concern as hypocrisy. She’d already made enemies of half the dragons. “I don’t remember you around.” The Newt drew himself up. His eyes were blue and somehow froze every single one of them in one glance. “I am Gerald.” he said with immense dignity. “And my Father made a big mistake choosing me. I am Catholic.” There was dead silence. Even as the Dragon-born were getting over their shock and mounting their rage to charge, he vanished. “I am an Unseen Dragon.” he said from the air. The Dragon-born would have given chase to the accursed traitor in their ranks, this bastard who was both of them and of the enemy, but a sound like pebbles falling froze them in their tracks. Above them the Dragons were waking up. Frantically the Dragon-born tried to teleport, but in that place they could not. They shrank together as the stone moved around them and enormous shapes, sarcastically smiling, leered down upon them. Then voices in some ancient and horrible speech resounded from one of them, and with screams of prickling pain the Dragon-born turned into stone. Back to Arheled